SUNDAY READING

Taranaki Daily News, 14 October 1916, Page 6

SUNDAY READING

CHRISTIAN CARELESSNESS SERMON 'PREACHED BY REV. A. H. COLVILE, M.A., in St. Mary's Church, New Plymorth. "Be not anxious. Why are ye anxious?"—St. Matthew vi., '25, ?8. j Nowhere, perhaps, has the advice of Jesus Christ been more consistently ignored by Christians than in His deprecation of anxiety about food and clothing and care for to-morrow. We are apt to condemn people who live a hand-to-mouth life. ■ We speak of them as improvident. On the other hand, we praise people who are far-seeing and thrifty anil make plans for increasing their wealth in the days to come. What, for instance, does the ordinary business man of to-day think of our Lord's advice? No doubt the 'true meaning of His words has been considerably obscured by the unfortunate translation, '"take no thought," of the authorised version, but even the revisers' "be not | anxious" must seem to many rather | dangerous advice. Surely -a man might fairly claim that the only way to prevent concern for his material needs from invading the innermost sanctuary of his mind was to think very carefully of the , morrow and make every provision against it. "The more elaborately I plan for to-morrow," he may think, "the less I shall have to work when to-mor-row comes." And we know that there is much truth in that.

If in these days anyone were to venture on what is sometimes called "a life of faith," living as unconcernedly as the birds of the air, he would have to depend either on miracles or on charity. What, then, are we to think of the gospel for the day? How are we to take to ourselves the advice of our Master and apply it to our own Hves that those lives may be happier and better worth the living? First, let us understand that the Greek words, translated "take no thought," "be not anxious, ' really suggest something much stronger. They limply a condition of the mind amounting to harassing and absorbing work. It is as if a man got so "rattled" (that is really the word) about the sufficiency of material things, both now and in the future, that he became incapable of making the most of or getting the most out of the life that he is living. And everyone would agree that this sort of life is suicidal. At once the old Latin tag comes into the mind, "Propter vitam Vivendi perdere causas," "For the sake of life to lose the reasons for living." It is fatally easy, my friends, to get so absorbed in the process as to FORGET THE PURPOSE OF LIFE, to be so keen on getting together the furniture that we forget about the building of the house. You remember in "Nicholas Nickleby" Mr. Vincent Crummies, the theatrical manager, having picked up a property pump and two real tubs, wanted a play written, round them. So do many people treat life. They acquire a number of material tilings and try to build their lives round them. We all need a spring cleaning of our minds, a setting of things in their right order, a re-adjustment of standards and ideals, lest we lose our sense of proportion and miss the true meaning of life. To put it on the lowest level—if in the gaining of our daily bread and in providing for the body, we forget that the real thing is the enjoyment of a full life, then we are unconsciously condemning ourselves to the dreariest sort of slavery in the world. And it is from that kind of slavery that Jesus would set us free when he says "Be not anxious" when he recommends what may be called "Christian carelessness." And how many of those sort of slaves there are in the world! Indeed, one hasn't far to look for thbm. Here is one of the ordinary money-getters, or money-gotters. He has become completely absorbed in the raking together of material possessions, but he can't for the life of him enjoy what he is getting or what he has got. He has perhaps a beautiful home full of pictures and hooks. Does he really enjoy the pictures and read the books—do they make his own life and the life of others fuller and happier? Or perhaps he hasn't a 'beautiful home full of pictures and books because his money so absorbs him that he dare not spend a penny on enlarging his life If he is asked for a subscription, the vision of bankruptcy rises up before his eyes and he is terrified. So the poor fellow never even tastes the fullness of life. He fits stolidly on his pile of gold day after day and when he dies he leaves it to his children, who have no more idea of using it to mawe life more abundant than he had himself. 'He i~ a slave to the "property pump and the two real using it to make life more abundant tubs." There is no guarantee, my friends, that an increase of possessions will bring an increase of life, and I say emphatically that the life of this and every other community would be immeasurably quickened and enlarge! if its well-to-do people would take to their hearts the spirit of bur Lord's advice and PRACTICE A LITTLE CHRISTIAN CARELESSNESS. Jesus Christ came to deliver us fiom this sort of tyranny, as well as from many other tyrannies. His "be not anxious'-' is really a sort of test. It pulls us up shorl and forces home to us the question, "Are these material things that we are striving for really giving lis a full and abundant life?" Our Lord does not forbid our realising life in all its fullness. He only asks whether, after all, we are really living, and whether wo are really enjoying it. He does not set before us some impossible ideal of life. He simply warns us not to allow ourselves to be cheated out of life by over-anxiety for secondary things. He forbids no freedom except that which ends in slavery. He brings us all inward freedom that we shall have time to live and to taste the goodness of life. We sometimes warn young people against the ideal of having a good time, and we do well because when that ideal is pursued to the exclusion of all else it leads to a colossal selfishness and insensibility to the claims of others and sometimes to the most deadly forms of sin. But we might perhaps jnore usefully advise young people, to whom life is offering much, to be quite sure that tliev reaily do have a good time. To disregard the claims of others, to rake in to your life every kind of pleasure that appeals for the moment to your bodily sense, to let go your hold on yourself and follow every unworthy impulse is not to have a good time. It is to have a very bad time indeed. It is to lay up for yourself days of emptiness, of loneliness, of frctful-

ness and fear; it is to bring the true self into the most pitiable Icihd of slavery. Sin always spoils "the good time." Selfishness (and all sin is really selfishness) is that which enslaves; religion (true religion) is that which- sets free. So, my friends, when Jesus Christ says, ''be not anxious for your life," He is upholding THE TRUE IDEAL OF LIFE, the supremacy and independence of the soul, supremacy over circumstances, independence of material possessions. He wants us to enjoy life abundantly, to make the very most of it, to get the very most out of it. How can we do this if we allow ourselves to be gripped by the tyranny of anxiety, the tyranny of absorption in pleasure or any other sort of tyranny that keeps us "Cabined, cribbed, confined, "bound up To saucy doubts and fears." I want to impress upon the yoi.ng people here that when Christ calls us to self-denial, it is not to self-denial for its own sake, but as a means to an end, and that end a larger life for ourselves and others." You don't like having to deny yourself. You don't like always to have to say "no." It is dreary w(Jrk saying "no." Sometimes it is necessary, because only by saying "no" can you avoid the handcuffs and the fetters. But it is better to say "yes," and to think of life in that way; to gay "ves" to every opportunity that comes to you of serving others and improving yourselves, to say "yes" to every good influence that would touch you, to every chance given you of spiritual progress. The more often you say "yes" to God, the less often you will have to say "no" to man. And we older people, who have probably said "no" much too often, who perhaps are always being tempted to say "no" to every appeal made to us to enlarge our lives; we must strive now to get those lives of ours rightly lixed and proportioned before we leave this world. It may well be hard for some of us to adjust our standards We have been so accustomed to put material things first that we hardly realise the tyranny under which we and those who come,, in contact with us are suffering. Now, Jesus did not ask all men to give up their possession, but He did ask some, because their possessions were enslaving and destroying their souls; and doubtless He ffould ask the same of some people to-day. But remember that the virtue is not in what one gives up, but what one is enabled to gain toy giving u£>. The secret of possession is, after all, an inner one. It is not the amount of food on your plate that nourishes you; it is the faculty of assimilation, the power of appreciation. So it is with all material tilings. The anxiety of absorption simply destVoys tlie 'life they ought to bring to you and others. Let us pray that we may learn so to value and use our worldly possessions that when the times comes for us to leave them we shall bid them farewell with no anxiety or r.egret, for the good that they have been .to ourselves and to those around us will follow us beyond the grave and be our passport to the perfect peace of God's eternal home.